My 2017 Reading Challenge

Okay, so I asked around about classics to read in 2017 a while back, but I think rather than specifically classics per se I think that my reading challenge to myself this year is going to be to broaden my horizons (as much as I could read Jane Austen until the cows come home.) I want to read different stuff to what I usually do (SF, fantasy, thrillers, primarily by British or American authors.)

So, my challenge to myself is this:

Each month, read or listen to (audiobook, not adaptation) and review two books which fall outside my usual genres of preference, and/or are written by authors who are non-white, non-English, non-straight, non-male or otherwise fall outside the usual range of voices in my reading. For extra credit, add in some poetry, because I basically never read poetry.

I plan to loosely theme each month, because that's how I roll. I've got the following penciled in, but there are obviously some pretty big gaps. What would you recommend to me to fill them?

January - Magic Realism

1. 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter

February - Gothic

1. White is for Witching - Helen Oyeyemi
2. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson

March - Mad People

1. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
2. Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh

April - China

1. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie
2. Wild Swans - Jung Chang

May - Australia

1. Carpentaria - Alexis Wright
2. That Deadman Dance - Kim Scott

June - Emancipation

1. Beloved - Toni Morrison
2. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

July - India

1. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
2.  The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

August - The Luke Cage Syllabus

1. Little Green - Walter Mosley
2. Crime Partners - Donald Goines

September - Africa

1.  Dust - Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
2.  We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

October - 

1.  Travel Light - Naomi Mitchison
2.  

November - Muslim Authors
With this one, I might want to swap out one of the memoirs for something purely fictional.

1. Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
2. Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi

December - Mother Russia

1.  Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2. The Secret History of Moscow - Ekaterina Sedia

Poetry and Music Bonuses

1. Tupac - The Rose that Grew From Concrete
2. Guante - A Love Song, A Death Rattle, A Battle Cry
3. Edgar Allen Poe - Collected Verse
4. Te Vaka - Havili
5. Freida Hughes - Wooroloo